Odd Things Happen

Haven't posted here for ages. Anyhow, for those of you who have Sky Sports - I take it you watched the two matches of the season (so far)? The mighy 'County verses an incredably dirty and spitefull Wycombe? To be fair Wycombe were considerably less dirty in the second leg, but the first leg they were bloody disgraceful. And I think the Cheadle End let Paul Labert know what they thought last Saturday!! But the important thing is the right result occurred, so now it's off to Wembly to play Rochdale.

Alas I can't make it because I'm on holiday

Mind you I didn;t enjoy my last trip there (9-men verses the Burnley !"*?) we could have won had a certain Mr Elery sent one of their's off as he should. But next Monday will be a different game and I'll have it to look forward to when I get home!

My little girl decided this morning she just needed to draw a picture and write some words after breakfast (and so she did). I've just read the words:

My best friend is J
My back up friends are K, K, M, E and L

I just think the idea of back up friends is an idea worth persuing!

Making a bit of a mess decorating the lounge today. It took me all day to do the coving (twice), ceiling (once) and buy and fit two bits of skirting board. Now I am knackered and can't watch TV because the lounge is a tip... Still the carpet men ran today and said the new carpet's ready for delivery (thankfully not this week!)

Oh I'm just a little upset again with Internet shopping. I have to say I like Internet shopping - I could have done without the bank rining me up to say they've stopped one of my credit cards because of Internet fraud. Well actually I am glad they stopped it (obviously!!). But the thing that's ragging me at the moment is livingaidsonline (name and shame). Why? Well read on, actually it's all rather petty, but it's !*£"! me off a slightly.

Our council went (like lots of others) a bit greener last year and we've got a green box for paper, cans and bottles. Well I keep on thinking that as the kids get older and want to help more in the kitchen, we should be thinking more about those nasty sharp edges on our tin cans. Also I am incredably nervous (paranoid's a better word) about the tops of tin cans in the box, and just know we're close to spraying the utility room (home of the green box) a rather unattractive shade of chrimson.

So I surfed a bit for one of those safety can openners. And livingaidsonline had a ROSPA certified one, not cheap (£20) but better then lots of blood around the kitchen. So I bought it and waited... and waited and (well waited). Just to say it didn't take them long to debit my credit card... No joy so I rang them, and was rung back by a lady who said they didn't have any of that can-opener in stock. Well perhaps they should have said that on their site, or in there auto-email...

She said they had another (style) in stock and asked if I wanted it, was it a saftey one? Yes she said, so I said okay. And I waited... and (you guesed it) waited... Last week I rung them again and asked where was it? Oh it was sent registered post... Well yes it was but not until *after* this second phone call.

And it arrived yesterday. And I openned it and... nope not the saftey can opener I had in mind. In fact nothing of the sort. In fact after a quick surf I found it's a "good" can openner and it's available for 6.45 at one site (in a sale from £9.99). Mmm so let me think - it took about a month, it took several phone calls, it isn't what I ordered, worse it's just a normal opener and they've made at least £15 on the sale.

!*""! off is the word and they'll be getting a venting of my middle-aged splene shortly.

It shouldn't be that hard should it?

It's just destined to be "one of those" fiascos. So we bought this bloomin' fire back in December, the plumber couldn't be arsed fitting it until after the New Year. By which point it was noted to be missing a couple of parts, which now out of it's "7 day bought over the internet" warrenty thing meant phone calls to Baxi for the parts (which they very nicely sent free of charge). And when fitted the plumber said he didn't like the fact that there was a really heat radiation occuring above the fire place in the plasterboard. Monitoring the situation, we didn't use the fire until the missing bits were installed. Then the plumber did and there's still this red-hot heat problem.

So I ring Baxi and get one of their engineers out and he came today. To paraphrase an old AA advert, he was a very nice man. But... we had three incidents... firstly the fire was "behaving itself" in that there was no red-hot plasterboard. So he was just about to signoff when he put the facure back on. And then... hey what-do-you-know? Red hot plasterboard. Well Mr Baxi huffed and puffed and rang his boss, and his fire-specialist mate, both to no avail. Then put a call through to the fire-people back at Baxi, they were busy so they took his number and he (still some 3.5 hours later) is waiting for a return call.

But at least the fire is doing what I said it was. But there's more - a small amount of smoke(?!) drifting up from the top of the fire surround!!! Which after inspection he thinks is "just some of the protective oil burning off", nothing to worry about... oh, really?

So now he's gone (well he left at one o'clock). The fire's still on (burning off the noxious stuff), and I am still awaiting a call about the hot plasterboard.

The moral - don't buy a fire off the Internet I guess.

That's one of my little boy's words, it just makes me smile. He's a growing four now and loves Quavers and his favorite flavour is "popcorn tales". Yesterday he had chrisps as a snack at playschool, I asked him what flavour and he said "prawn cocktail". I and mum asked him another couple of times and he answered the same.

Looks like one of his baby phrases is gone for good I think "popcorn tails" sounds altogether sweeter!

Didn't want to post the same thing twice. But those who read this blog occasionally should maybe go and look at this post on my swimming blog, it just puts a lot of live in perspective.

So please spare a few moments and **click here**

Well they're back and they are making good (aka finishing the fire and stuff they said/should have done). One of the things is a small bit of plaster work above the boiler. I could do it, but I am crap at plastering, and it's in a "difficult" place, and it's their job because "making good" was in the price...

And they're doing the plastering (hurray), but I go in the kitchen and... (you've probably guessed it)... he's decided to use the kitchen sink for plaster mixing!!!!????!!!!! That'd be the kitchen sink that used to have clean breakfast things drying on it. But what really gets me is that the boiler's in the "utility" room which has it's own scruffy/well used/metal sink. It's right next to the bloomin' boiler. He doesn't even have to move to use it...

Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh (again)

Oh I am in a right mood just now. This is my first post for ages and it's the first post of the new year. I had good intentions of starting to post earlier (didn't happen) and I had good intentions of being possitive. But boy am I a little bit hacked off at the moment!

It all started at the end of last year, won't bore you with all the details but we "needed" a new gas fire and on the back of that what we really needed was a new central heating system (due to crap one that came with the house). So after getting an outragiously expensive quote from British Gas (not only was it vastly over priced but the quote contained 13 radiators (he couldn't count should have been 14) all of the same size and spec... err... nope a 4 foot radiator would look silly sticking out of the downstairs loo!!

We got a quote of a local plumber, who'd done work at our last house. His quote was quite a bit less than BG, and when negotiating my OH got the plumber to throw in the fire fitting as a kind of "loss leader". So we're winning always round.

To cut a story short. They fitted the new central heating before Xmas - hurray a warm house for the festive period! But didn't fit the fire (didn't have time...) so we agreed a date after Xmas - today as it happens. Now I bought the fire almost a month ago, so it's been sitting in a box in our lounge for the best part of 4 weeks. The central heating's fine (except that the radio controlled thermostat doesn't work). This has taken Mr plumber three weeks (well he doesn't want to work around Xmas does he?) to fix. But actually it's not fixed because the replacement doesn;t work. So we've now got an old fashioned (but working) timer on the boiler and no thermostat. Still he's got another style that he'll bring... next week. So we've got a hole on the wall in the hall where the 'stat should be - but isn't.

But the thing that's really got me is, they turn up today and left at 12:30 saying we've done all we can do today, we'll be back next week. And I look at what they've done, and they've part fitted my new fire (no faciour, no gas, nothing other than the new fire in the hole). They can't finish it today because... nope didn't catch the reason (I think it was something like - can't be arsed, or similar). But better than that, they just left everything in situ. So now they've gone I've got to workout which bits of metal/screws/god-knows-what that they've left strewn about the place is actually part of the (finished) fire. And I've got to work out how to stop my little boy bending/pulling any other wires sticking out of the new hole in the wall.

Oh I am just a bit hacked off really...

Haven't posted for a while but this has amused me for the past week or so, and I've finally stuck the video on my machine and now on here:

If you remember back a couple of weeks ago we had some snow (well we did here anyway), well this story starts back then... Me and the kids had to go play in the half centermeter of snow, which we did them in their wellies, me in my old boots. When we finished it was back in and I put the boots in the "utility" room to dry out.

Now some may know we've got a pet tortoise (Toby) who's 67 years old (middle aged for a spur-thigh apparently). Now he's not been the most active of beasts this summer. But now it's coming in to winter he's been bashing and crashing around the utility room for the past few weeks. But we didn't budget on the "boot-effect".

I came home from work one night and my OH is all but wetting herself with laughter. She says "go and ask the girlie what Toby's been doing", so I do and she says "he's been fighting with my boot and making funny noises". Now I didn't know tortoises made noises, but Toby does apparently. Talking to my OH I find out that either Toby, or my left boot (not sure which), is an insatiable shag monster! And Toby's been displaying, butting, biting and shagging my boot. And not only that when he really gets going he squeaks (think of the sound of a creaky door in a mouse house!)

And it's these noises that are killing my OH. She decided that the girlie, only being six, can live with the missunderstanding of Toby fighting. But perhaps I'll keep the video for her sex-ed lessons when she's older.

So hopefully attached is a little bit of nature, just needing a whispering voice over from D Antenborough!!